Chapter 4

'That daughter is now alive,' continued Grosket, speaking slowly, that every word might tell with tenfold force. 'That daughter now is, what you drove my child to be, a harlot.'

'It's false as hell!' shouted Rust, in a tone that made the room ring. 'It's false!'

'It's true. I can prove it; prove it, clear as the noon-day,' returned Grosket, with a loud, exulting laugh.

'Oh! Enoch! oh, Enoch!' said Rust, in a broken, supplicating tone, 'tell me that it's false, and I'll bless you! Crush me, blight me, do what you will, only tell me that my own loved child is pure from spot or stain! Tell me so, I beseech you; _I_, Michael Rust, who never begged a boon before--_I_ beseech you.'

He fell on his knees in front of Grosket, and clasping his hands together, raised them toward him.

'I cannot,' replied Grosket, coldly, 'for it's as true as there is a heaven above us!'

Rust made an effort to speak; his fingers worked convulsively, and he fell prostrate on the floor.

THE SACRIFICE.

'One day during the bloody executions which took place at Lyons, a young girl rushed into the hall where the revolutionary tribunal was held, and throwing herself at the feet of the judges, said: 'There remain to me of all my family only my brothers! Mother, father, sister--you have butchered all; and now you are going to condemn my brothers. Oh! in mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them!' Her prayer was refused, and she threw herself into the Rhone and perished.'

DU BROCA.

The judges have met in the council-hall, A strange and a motley pageant, all: What seek they? to win for their land a name The brightest and best in the lists of fame? The light of Mercy's all-hallowed ray To look with grief on the culprit's way? Nay! watch the smile and the flushing brow, And in that crowd what read ye now? The daring spirit and purpose high, The fiery glance of the eagle eye That marked the Roman's haughty pride, In the days of yore by the Tiber's side? The stern resolve of the patriot's breast, When the warrior's zeal has sunk to rest? No! Mercy has fled from the hardened heart, And Justice and Truth in her steps depart, And the fires of hell rage fierce and warm Mid the fitful strife of the spirit's storm.

But a wail is borne on the troubled air: What victim comes those frowns to dare? 'Tis woman's form and woman's eye, That Time hath passed full lightly by; The limner's art in vain might trace The glorious beauty and winning grace Of that fair girl; youth's sunny day Flings its radiance over life's changing way: Why has she left her princely home, Why to that hall a suppliant come? Her heart is sad with a deepening gloom, For Hope has found in her heart a tomb. With quiv'ring lip, and eye whose light Is faint as the moon in a cloudy night, And with cheek as pale as the crimson glow That the sunset casts on the spotless snow; Nerved with the strength of wild despair, Low at their feet she pours her prayer:

'My home! my home! is desolate, For ye have slain them all, And cast upon the light of Love Death's cold and fearful pall. We knelt in agony to save My father's silver hair, Ye would not mark the bitter tears, Nor list the frantic prayer!

'And then ye took my mother too: Ye must remember now The words that lingered on her lip, The grief upon her brow; My sister wept in bitter wo-- Her dark and earnest eyes Asked for the mercy ye will seek In vain in yonder skies!

'But your hearts were like the flinty rock, And cold as ocean's foam; You tore them from my clasping arms, And bore them from our home: And now my brothers ye will slay! But they are proud and high, And come with spirits brave and true, Your tortures to defy.

'I will not ask from you their lives, I will not seek to roll The clouds of midnight from your hearts; Ye cannot touch the soul! But grant my prayer, and I will pray For you in yonder sky; Oh, GOD! I ask a little thing-- I ask with them to die!'

But the burning words fell cold and lone, As the sun's warm rays on a marble stone; Life was a curse too bitter and wild For the broken heart of Earth's weary child; And the stricken one found a self-sought grave 'Neath the crystal light of the foaming wave.

_Shelter-Island._ MARY GARDINER.

THE DEATH BED.

A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A 'COUNTRY DOCTOR.'

BY F. W. SHELTON.

'Bury me in the valley, beneath the willows where I have watched the rippling waves, among the scenes of beauty which I loved so well, oh! my friend!' exclaimed the dying youth; and as he grasped my hand his lips moved tremblingly, tears gushed upon his wan cheeks, and an expression of very sadness stole upon him. His looks were lingering; such as one flings back upon some paradise of beauty which he leaves forever; some home which childhood has endeared to him, and affection has filled with the loves and graces. Pity touched my soul as I regarded silently that beaming countenance, alas! so shrunken from the swelling, undulating lines of his hilarious health; a pity such as one feels whose hopes are too inexplicably bound up with another's, who shares his very being, and who knows by all the sympathies of a brother's bosom that the other's heart-strings are snapping. _Animæ dimidium meæ!_--beautiful expression of the poet, comprehended less while life unites, than when death severs. It is only when gazing on the seal which has been set, we inquire 'Where is the spirit?' and struggle in vain to understand that great difference; when the smiles which shed their sunshine have rapidly vanished, and the voice we loved has died away like the music of a harp; when that which was light, joy, wit, eloquence, has departed with the latest breath; when, in short, we are awakened from our revery by the clods falling on the coffin, and the mourners moving away; it is then that the soul, diminished of its essence, flits away with a strange sense to its unjoyous abode, as a bird would return to its lonely nest.

There never existed one who more lived and moved, and had his spiritual being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: _dulcis vita_, sweet life. It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement of fierce passions; a present divorce from a close and clinging alliance; a foretaste of the waters of life; in short, the very essence and devotion of a pure religion. Would it seem strangely inconsistent that a being of so sweet a character as I shall describe him, my poor young friend declared, with a gush of the bitterest tears, that he _could_ not go into the dark valley, for he loved life with an inconceivable, passionate love? His was the very agony and pathos of the dying Hoffman, when almost with his latest breath, he alluded to 'the sweet habitude of being.' But it was only, thanks be to GOD! a short defection, a momentary clouding of that bright faith which was destined soon to see beyond the vale. His tears ceased to flow, glistened a moment, and then passed away as if they had been wiped by some gentle hand.

He leaned upon a soft couch, so very pale and haggard that his hour seemed very near. Costly books strewed his table; pictures and many exquisite things were scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with sentiments which awakened hope. Youth and beauty hovered around him with their unintermitted care, and Age sent up its fervent prayers to heaven. Oh! who but the ungrateful would not love a life so filled with blandishments and crowned with blessings? Who could see all these receding without a sigh, or feel the pressure of that kiss of love as pure as if it had its origin in Heaven? But with the finest organization of intellectual mind, he had been accustomed to look at all things in the light of poetry. For one so constituted the pleasures which are in store are as inexhaustible as the works or mercies of his God. Not an hour which did not present some new phase of undiscovered beauty. He revelled in the beams of the morning; the rising sun was never a common object, nor its grandeur ever lost upon a soul so conscious of the sublime. For all beauty in nature he found a correspondent passion in the soul; and intoxicated alike with the music of birds or the perfume of flowers, found no weariness in a life whose current was like the living spring, pure, perennial and delightful.

To be so susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a gentle sleep after a long and weary day.

Travers was in the very gush and spring-tide of his youth; yet crowned as he was with blessings, and every attribute for their most perfect enjoyment, the true secret of his too fond desire to live, was that _he loved_:

'He loved but one, And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.'

In her the poetry of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian's hope, enable us one by one to break off the dearest ties, and to renounce whatever we most love on earth. And so my young friend in good time emerged from the cloud which obscured his prospects, and saw clearly beyond the vale. It is not long since, being well assured that his fate was inevitable, he expressed a desire, which he carried into execution, to visit once more his well-loved haunts, and take a solemn farewell of them all. As one grasps the hand of a friend at parting, he looked his last at things which were inanimate. He rambled in the deep, dark groves whither he had so often gone in health, to enjoy their Gothic grandeur, to breathe the spirit of the religion they inspire, or to murmur in their deepest shades the accents of his pure and passionate love. He inscribed his name for the last time upon the smooth bark of a tree; then leaving them forever, as he emerged into the gay meadows, he turned to me with tears and said:

'Ye woods, and wilds, whose melancholy gloom Accords with my soul's sadness, and draws forth The voice of sorrow from my bursting heart!'

He clambered the steep hill-side, and sinking exhausted beneath a smitten tree, enjoyed the picturesqueness of the scene; the meadows, the streams, the pasture-grounds, the dappled herds, the sereneness of the summer skies, cleft by the wing of the musical lark, in all their purity of blue. He sat beside the sea-shore, and watched the big billows breaking and bursting at his feet; and as he looked where the waters and the sky met together in the far horizon, he exclaimed, 'Now indeed do I long to fly away!' Then he returned to his pillow, never to go forth again. 'I shall die,' he said, 'when the season is in its prime and glory; when the fields are green and the trees leafy; and the sunlight shall shimmer down through the branches where the birds sing over my grave.' Then casting a look at his books, where they stood neatly arranged on the well-filled shelves, he lamented that he had not time to garner half the stores of a beautiful literature; to satisfy his perpetual thirst; to drink to the full at the 'pure wells of English undefiled.' There were the Greek poets, whom he would have more intimately cherished, (he had been lately absorbed in the sublimity of the 'Prometheus Vinctus;') there was the great master and anatomizer of the human heart, who knew how to detail the springs of action common to all ages, the paragon of that deep learning which is not derived from books, but gleaned by his genius from all nature with a rare intuition, and with an incomprehensible power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all its beauties. There is no glowing thought, no exquisite conception, no sublime and beautiful idea, which is not imperishable as the mind itself, and which shall not be carried on from age to age, or if destroyed or lost upon the written page, revived by some happy coincidence of intellectual being, and perpetuated and enjoyed, here or hereafter, wherever mind exists. A communion like this will be a communion of spirits. A finer organization, expanded faculties shall rapidly consume the past; but oh, the future! what glories are to be crowded into its immensity? How shall knowledge be commensurate with the stars, or wander over the universe? Now bring me the written Revelation, the written word. It clasps within its volume all excellencies, all sublimities of speech; secrets which could not be developed by reason, nor found in the arcana of human wisdom. Henceforth this shall be my only companion, and its promises shall light my passage over the grave.'

I marked the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at all things on the 'bright side.' His very love could think upon its object without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the darkened windows, the stillness, the grouping, the subdued sobs, the awful watchfulness for the identical moment when a lovely and intellectual spirit breaks its bonds, as if the strained vision could detect the spiritual essence. What a heart-sickness comes over those who love! What a change in the appearance of all things! The very sun-light is disagreeable, the very skies a mockery; the very roses unlovely. We look out of the casement, and see the external face of nature still the same; how heartless, how destitute of sympathy, now appears the whole world without, with the home, that inner world! How can those birds sing so sweetly on the branches; how can the flowers bloom as brightly as ever; how can those children play so gleefully; how can yon group laugh with such unconcern! He is an only son. Though wan, and wasted in all his lineaments, his pure brow, his gentle expression, tell that he was worthy to be loved. Can no human power restore him to the arms of a fond mother? It is in vain! The spirit flutters upon his lips; it has departed. But it has left behind it a token; a clear, bright impress; a smile of undissembled love and purity; an expression beaming with the last unutterable peace; the graces which were so winning upon earth, but which shall attain their perfection in heaven.

FREEDOM'S BEACON.

'To-day, to-day it speaks to us! Its future auditories will be the generations of men, as they rise up before it and gather round it'

WEBSTER.

'To-day it speaks to us!' Of 'the times that tried men's souls,' When hostile ships rode where yon bay Its deep blue waters rolls: When the war-cloud dark was lowering Portentous o'er the land; When the vassal troops of Britain came With bayonet, sword and brand.

'To-day it speaks to us!' Of brave deeds nobly done, When patriot hearts beat high with hope, Ere Freedom's cause was won: Of the conflict fierce, where fell New-England's valiant men, Who waved their country's banner high, Though warm blood dyed it then!

And will its voice be still When the thousands of to-day, Who have come like pilgrim-worshippers, From earth shall pass away? Oh no! 'the potent orator' To future times shall tell Where PRESCOTT, BROOKS, and PUTNAM fought, Where gallant WARREN fell.

'Twill speak of these, and others-- Of brave men, born and nurst In stormy times, on Danger's lap. Who dared Oppression's worst: Of Vernon's chief, and he who came Across the Atlantic flood, To offer to the patriot's GOD A sacrifice of blood.

Long as the 'Bay State' cherishes One thought of sainted sires, Long as the day-god greets her cliffs, Or gilds her domes and spires; Long as her granite hills remain Firm fixed, so long shall be Yon Monument on Bunker's height A beacon for the free!

A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS.

IN THREE SCENES.

SCENE FIRST.

Morning; eight on the clock. BILLING'S HOTEL, Trenton. Outside, a clear bright sun glancing down through an atmosphere sparkling with frost, upon as fine a road for a sleigh-ride as ever tempted green-mountain boys and girls for a moonlight flit. Inside, a well-furnished breakfast-table, beef-steak, coffee, toast, etc., etc. On the one side of it your correspondent; serious, as if he considered breakfast a thing to be attended to. He is somewhat, as the lady on the other side of the table says, _somewhat_ in the 'sear leaf,' by which name indeed she is pleased to call him; but there is enough of spring in her, to suffice for all deficiencies in him. Like the morning, she is a _little_ icy, but sunshiny, sparkling, exhilarating, thoughtful, youthful--and decided. She takes no marked interest in the breakfast.

'Sear leaf!' Madam, say on.

'I wish to go to the Falls.'

'To what!'

'To the Falls--to Trenton Falls.'

He drops his knife and fork. 'Whew! what! in winter?--in the snow?--on the ice?'

'Certainly; that is just the season.'

'Crazy! You were there in the summer----'

'I know it; every one goes there in summer. I must see them now. There's no time like it; in their drapery of snow and ice; in the sternness and solitude, the wild grandeur of winter!'

'How you run on! You'll miss the cars at Utica.'

'I don't care.'

'You'll be a day later in New-York.'

'I don't care. I must see them in their hoary head.'

'You wish to see if they look as well in gray hairs as I do, perhaps.'

'Yes.'

'You really must go?'

'Yes.'

'You are a very imperious young lady; and allow me to say, that although some young gentlemen----'

Lady, interrupting him: 'Shall I ring the bell?' She rings it. Enter landlord. She orders the horse and cutter.

SCENE SECOND.

Enter landlord: 'All ready, Sir.'

'Will you allow me to ask if your feet are warmly clad, Madam?'

'I am ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc, or a ramble with a hunter upon the shore of Hudson's Bay.'

'Very well; now for the cutter.'

'Landlord, just step round, if you please, and put that buffalo-robe a little more closely about the lady. Hold fast, hostler! That horse likes any thing better than standing still.'

'Ay, ay, Sir.'

'Now we are ready. Let go! Away we dash; 'on for the Falls!' Gently, my good horse, gently round this corner; now 'go ahead!' How do you like my steed, Madam?'

'A rein-deer could not transact this little business better.'

'Is not this a glorious morning?'

'Vivifying to the utmost! How far we fail of becoming acquainted with the face of nature, when we only come to look upon it in summer! It is as if one should only look upon the human face in the hues of youth, and never upon the gray head; on the brow where high thoughts have left their impress; on the face which deeper and sterner knowledge, research, patience, have made eloquent, while stealing away the rose. As for me, though I am but a girl, I like to see sometimes an old man; one who in the trial-hour of life has kept his integrity; and when the snows of age fall on him, he gently bends beneath their weight, like those old cedars yonder by the way-side, beneath their weight of snow. Wherever the eye can pierce their white vesture, all is still deep spring-green beneath; unchanged at heart--strong and true. So I like to look on you, Sere Leaf.'

'Thank you! You have a gift at compliments.'

'Summer reminds one of feeling and Lalla Rookh; Winter; of intellect and Paradise Lost.'

'How your voice rings in this clear air! Do you know what Dean Swift says a sleigh-ride is like? 'Sitting in the draft of a door with your feet in a pail of cold water!''

'Abominable! libellous! Exhilaration and comfort are so blended in me that---- But is not that the house?'

'Ay; here we are! Smoke from the chimney; some one is there to welcome us, no doubt. Gently, my Bucephalus, through this gate! There comes the landlord. Treat my horse well, if you please; we are going to the Falls.'

SCENE THIRD.

'Madam, are you ready for the woods?'

'Quite. How still the air is! Why don't you thank me for insisting on coming? You have no gratitude. There's not two inches of snow on the ground. It all seems piled upon these grand old trees. There! see that tuft of it falling and now spreading into a cloud of spangles in the sun-light which streams down by those old pines. Hark! the roar of waters! The sound seems to find new echoes in these snow-laden boughs, and lingers as if loth to depart.'

'This way, Madam; the trees are bent too low over the path to allow a passage there. We are near the bank which overlooks the first fall. Take my arm; the brink may be icy. Lo! the abyss!'

'Magnificent! What a rush of waters! How the swollen stream foams and rages!'

'And see! the pathway under the shelving rock where we passed in summer is completely colonnaded by a row of tall ice pillars; gigantic, symmetrical--fluted, even. What Corinthian shaft ever equalled them! What capital ever rivalled the delicacy or grace of those ice-and-hemlock wreaths about their summits!'

'And see those pines, rank above rank, higher and higher; stately and still and snow-robed like tall centinels! Perhaps, Sear Leaf, the Old Guard might have stood thus in the Russian snows over NAPOLEON, when he bivouacked on the hill-side, and sought rest while his spirit was as wildly tossed as the waters that dash beneath us.'

'Yes, Lady; or it may be that these trees in their perpetual green, in their calmness and dignity, may be emblematic of the way in which the angels who watch on earth look down on man. Perfect rest on perfect unrest.'

'Ah! you grow gloomy.'

'Took I not my hue from you? On, then, for the higher fall!'